“Kick, Kick, you idiot, where the hell are you?”
The Air Force Special Tactics soldier caught him from the side with his tree trunk arm.
“Lieutenant. Your friend—”
Starship turned and looked at him. The soldier shook his head. Starship shook his head as well.
“He can’t be dead. I pulled him out,” said Starship.
“I think he was dead when you pulled him out,” said the man. “Listen, we have to fall back to the bunker area until reinforcements come in. We don’t know how many more of these bozos are out there in the jungle. We’re down to six guys who can handle a weapon, not counting you and me.”
“I can’t leave Kick,” said Starship. “Where is he?”
“Sir, you’re going to have to leave him,” said the soldier. “Or you’re going to be dead, too.”
“He can’t be dead.”
“This way,” said the sergeant, starting to trot up toward the bunker.
Starship stared after him for a moment. Then, against his conscious will, his legs propelled him to follow.
Chapter 90
The man with the gun prodded Mack down the pathway past a cluster of small houses to a turnoff that led to a long wooden platform above the slope. At the far end of the platform sat a small building constructed from chipboard. Inside, Mack found several women holding or sitting with children on the floor of the single room. The far wall was a screen overlooking a rock-strewn slope down to the stream Mack had walked along earlier. A man with a pistol stood in front of the screen; he glanced nervously at Mack as his escort left him, then went back to watching out the side.
Unsure of the situation, Mack decided that his best course for now was to say nothing until he could puzzle out whether the men with the guns were terrorists who had invaded the settlement, or if they were the husbands of the women trying to protect them. But no one said anything, either to Mack or each other, outside of an occasional soft whisper to children who were fidgety.
“Are you for the government?” asked Mack finally. No one answered.
“Sultan?” he asked. But that didn’t draw a response, either.
“U.S.A?”
Nothing.
“Could I have some food?”
Still nothing. Mack propped his hands on his knees and leaned forward, baffled by the situation.
Chapter 91
Dog heard the whispery jet engine approaching from the north and realized it had to be a Flighthawk. He pulled the PRC radio from his pocket and switched it to voice.
“Colonel Tecumseh Bastian to Dreamland Flighthawk. You’re approaching my position,” he said.
The only response was static. Dog cupped his hand over the earphone as he broadcast and listened again.
“Dog, this is Zen. I should be just crossing overhead,” said the pilot finally.
“Yeah, I see you,” said the colonel as the black dart came overhead. “We were ambushed further up on the road. The terrorists got one of our guys.”
“I saw the Hummer. Danny is en route with a helicopter.”
“Danny?”
“He’s about fifteen minutes away. Pilot wants to claim a new speed record for an A-6,” said Zen. The transmission crackled and faded but then came back. “Can you find a good place for him to land?”
“Plenty of roadway,” said Dog.
Zen said something, but it was wiped by static. Dog asked him to repeat it but didn’t get an acknowledgment.
“You’re talking to the plane?” asked Lang, coming back. “Yeah. They have a helicopter en route. It’s about fifteen minutes away”
“We have to keep moving,” said the soldier. “They’re only a few hundred yards behind us, on the other side of the road”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. They’ve been following all along and now they’re starting to catch up. Come on”
Dog started to tell Zen that they were being pursued. He got only two words out of his mouth when the by now familiar rattle of an AK47 sounded through the nearby jungle.
“I didn’t get a good location,” Breanna told Zen. “I think his battery’s dying”
“They may be under fire,” he told her. “I see something popping down there. Something’s going on”
She flipped on the feed from the nose of the Flighthawk and watched as the small robot made a tree-top pass over the road. There was a flash off the right wing, but the robot plane went by so quickly it was impossible to tell exactly what had fired at it.
“I’d try raking the trees with the gun,” said Zen. “But I just can’t tell where they are”
“I have a better idea,” said Breanna. “Let’s show them we’re here and maybe they’ll back off.”
“Bree, they may decide we’re a good target—” said Zen, but she’d already started the aircraft downward. The Megafortress cleared the treetops by maybe five feet.
“Trying to break their eardrums?” Zen asked as she climbed.
“If it’ll help,” she said.
McKenna put the MiG-19 into a steep descent and got ready for her landing. She had to bleed off speed but keep the engine up in case she blew the approach in the unfamiliar plane; even a veteran MiG pilot could find the combination challenging on a rough field. The tiny runway came up quickly in her windscreen as she descended; she glanced at the dial tracking her engines’ rpms, making sure she had enough power to abort if necessary.
The MiG’s air speed plummeted from 325 knots to just over 200 as she dropped toward the hard-packed surface at the edge of the runway. Her flaps were open all the way and she was committed now. The craft sank abruptly, threatening to pancake. She got past it, the tail twitching slightly but her nose right, flaring up so the plane could help itself slow. But she reached prematurely for the throttle to throw it into neutral — a minor mistake in another plane, a potential catastrophe in the MiG-19 on a short runway. Cutting the speed so sharply caused the back end of the plane to slip downward abruptly once more, this time perilously close to the ground. She felt her heart thump, and then in the next instant felt something kick her from behind — her father, she thought, telling her not to be a jerk.
That was all it took. She managed to get the rear wheels down solid without scraping her butt on the runway. With her nose still up to increase drag, her speed quickly fell; when she slipped under 130 knots she dropped the front of the plane and went for the brakes and chute and brakes.
And brakes and brakes and brakes. She stopped with her nose over the end of the field.
“Never a doubt,” she said as she climbed out of the plane.
“My MiG!” exclaimed Prince bin Awg, materializing from the back of the crowd that ran out to greet her.
“She’s a beauty,” said McKenna.
“How did you rescue her?”
“She kind of called to me,” said McKenna.
The prince looked at her, then smiled. “For your bravery, you deserve a present.”
“I’ m not much for medals, Prince,” she told him. “Besides, it was mostly the Dreamland people. The terrorists made a move to the Megafortress and they decided they had to keep her on the ground. They took her rear stabilizer off and wiped out the fuel truck they’d brought in from outside the city somewhere”
“The Megafortress was destroyed?” asked the prince.